They sent me a survey and asked me some simple questions, but I don’t think they asked me the right ones, so I’m going to give a free-form review here. I think it’s a great idea, and presents some features not available anywhere else, but it’s missing some important content, and like everything Thompson does, it suffers from some useability issues.
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Maybe there’s a chance I could end up back in this wonderful city and have a career, too.
In a monumental announcement made late this afternoon, Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine said he will recommend that the state build a 424-bed, $1.2 billion academic teaching hospital in Downtown New Orleans that will serve as the hub of a rebuilt medical corridor.
Referring to the DHH proposal, the head of Louisiana State University’s health care division, Dr. Fred Cerise, said, “They revised the business plan a bit based on population and some shift in the makeup of the population, but overall (they) agreed that if we’re going to change the model to more of an academic medical center then we’re going to need the capacity to not only fulfill the charitable mission but also have space for our faculty to see their private pay patients there as well.”
The new hospital will be instrumental in the revitalization of not only the health care industry, but also the entire medical district and Downtown New Orleans. It will serve as the main teaching hub for medical students, nurses, post-graduate residents and other allied health students from LSU and Tulane University. The new facility will be instrumental in developing the DDD’s “industries of the mind” initiative. Attracting members of the creative class, such as leading medical researchers, technicians, and practitioners, is critical for shaping Downtown’s economic future.
The HPS consulting firm’s assessment is less sanguine, but overall deems the success of the center “likely”. Just to help paint the picture of things, the projected patient mix is:
13-21% Medicare
33-35% Medicaid
39-52% indigent
Way back when he was running for Governor of my fine state, I told everyone I could that Bobby Jindal was a Trojan horse for the religious right. I predicted that he was going to get right on the legislation they wanted. I thought he was going to go after stem cell research instead of evolution first, but I didn’t know what was going to happen with iPS cells in the meantime. Now look: Louisiana has a “protect the teaching of creationism” bill and he’s being considered as a VP candidate for McCain.
Quid pro quo, no?
Despite all that, you’ve been a little slow lately, and I found my thoughts wandering. Earlier today, I noticed a 2collab link, and, without thinking about it, clicked over to see what has changed since last time we met. Before I knew it, I was pulling in my publications via Scopus ID, tagging papers, and joining interest groups. I’m sorry, Connotea, but the speed was just so intoxicating that I went and exported my whole library from you and went to import it to 2collab. It seems my affections weren’t returned, however, as I was slapped with the following message:
Unable to import bookmarks: org.hibernate.exception.ConstraintViolationException: Could not execute JDBC batch update
Like a bucket of cold water, that returned me to my senses, and I came back to you, ol’ Buggotea.
Despite all that, I just invited my entire addressbook to linkedin. After scowling at how everyone was selected by default and how there was no way to select only people who currently have accounts, I carefully went through the list and selected a small number of people. When I hit the send invitation button, the page re-loaded and told me I had to confirm my email address first, which I did, in a separate window. Then I hit the send button again, and IT SENT THE GODDAMN INVITE TO EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE ADDRESS BOOK MAKING ME LOOK LIKE A GODDAMN N00B!
I knew something like this could happen, I was watching out for it, and they still got me! The bastards!
On a positive note, I did take the precaution of creating a special forwarding-only address just for them, so I could redirect the forward to the trash if that becomes necessary. Half the emails bounced anyways.
What Conversations does is to take an identifier, be it PMID, URL, or DOI, and pull in related information about the paper such as Postgenomic posts, Connotea bookmarks, citations, and related commentary around the web. Last time I looked, it was a bare-bones proof of principle, but I’m glad to see it’s looking like a proper webapp now. Great Job, Alf!
CNN, which was hotly denying the rumors of Clinton’s concession until as late as last night, has an article up about the policy differences between the Obama and McCain. The article they link to for a critical analysis of the candidates plans is entitled, “Why McCain has the best health-care plan”. Way to be impartial, CNN. Nonetheless, it’s a good article with lots of great detailed information on exactly how the two proposed policies would work, even if the conclusion presented in the title seems a little forced.
I’ll summarize the information from the article, and you can see if you come up with my conclusions, or the conclusions of the author.
McCain’s plan would eliminate the employer-paid healthcare plans in favor of a tax credit for buying insurance. He’s not abolishing the employer-paid plans, just making the cost of the plan be considered as taxable income, and offering a credit to offset the extra taxes you’d end up paying. This is thought to lead to via the free market to employers dropping the plans entirely in favor of simply paying employees more, which they can then spend on individual or family plans. It’s also assumed that people would contribute income to an HSA, so combining the increase in income + plus the tax credit would allow people to afford high-deductible, low-premium plans and pay out of pocket for anything else. To apply a little more free-market action to the health insurance industry, he’s going to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines, so a person in Mississippi could buy insurance from a Pennsylvania insurer, subject to Pennsylvania laws. This allows healthy, young people to find cheaper plans which cover less, but would result in increases in the cost of the more comprehensive plans, as they become increasingly composed of the expensive to care for old folks. The overall idea is that insurers will have to compete to get business, and this will make insurers pressure hospitals to reduce costs.
Obama’s plan has two components: a private and a public part. The public part is essentially Medicare as we have it today, and the private part is an employer-provided healthcare plan similiar to the federal employee healthcare plan. Employers can choose whether to offer the private plan or pay a tax to fund the public plan. The plans have a wide range of benefits, more than young people need, so the deductible isn’t as low as it could be under a free market system, but it will keep the comprehensive coverage plans from spiking in cost. Supposedly employers will all drop their plans and pay the tax to fund the public program. Under this system, the individual isn’t making much choice about which plan to get, rather it’s the insurance companies that have to figure out a way to lower costs if they want to increase profits.
Would it be too cute to say McCain’s plan would make health insurance like the airline industry, whereas Obama’s plan would make it like the public school system?